American Empire Comes At A Very High Price

By Cynthia Tucker

09/03/08 "Yahoo" --- - Once upon a time, the United States was the world's most powerful economic engine, a job-producing machine that propelled a broad swath of its citizens into a comfortable middle class. They bought tidy little houses they could afford. They bought big, shiny Chevrolets and Fords with bench seats.

They used their health insurance to pay for the occasional tonsillectomy or appendectomy. They retired with pensions generous enough to purchase nice gifts for the grandkids.

That period of broad prosperity was relatively short, no more than 50 years after the end of World War II, but it looms large in the national psyche, supplying the cultural icons and touchstones that furnish the "American dream." And that era depended as much on the weakness of other nations -- the backwardness of China and India as well as the postwar devastation of Europe -- as it did on American enterprise.

But it's a tricky business to announce to voters that the golden age is over. Just ask any of the current crop of presidential candidates.

As the era of widely shared prosperity staggers to its end, globalization -- "NAFTA" is the shorthand -- looks like the enemy, a con job foisted on ordinary Americans by greedy corporations and pointy-headed intellectuals. There may be a bit of truth to that.

Continued . . .